Too Healthy to Fall Sick? Longevity Expectations and Protective Health Behaviours during the First Wave of COVID-19

Martina Celidoni, Joan Costa-Font and Luca Salmasi

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2022, vol. 202, issue C, 733-745

Abstract: Longevity expectations (LE) are subjective assessments of future health status that can influence a number of individual health protective decisions. This is especially true during a pandemic such as COVID-19, as the risk of ill health depends more than ever on such protective decisions. This paper examines the causal effect of LE on some protective health behaviors and a number of decisions regarding forgoing health care. We use data from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe, and we draw on an instrumental variable strategy exploiting individual level information on parental age at death. Consistent with the too healthy to be sick hypothesis, we find that individuals, exhibiting higher expected longevity, are more likely to engage in protective behaviours, and are less likely to forgo medical treatment. We estimate that a one standard deviation increase in LE increases the probability to comply always with social distancing by 0.6%, to meet people less often by 0.4% and decreases the probability to forgo any medical treatment by 0.6%. Our estimates vary depending on supply side restrictions influencing the availability of health care, as well as individual characteristics such as gender and the presence of pre-existing health conditions.

Keywords: longevity expectations; private information; health behaviours; forgone medical treatment; health capital; SHARE; Europe; instrumental variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Too Healthy to Fall Sick? Longevity Expectations and Protective Health Behaviours during the First Wave of Covid-19 (2022)
Working Paper: Too healthy to fall sick? Longevity expectations and protective health behaviours during the first wave of COVID-19 (2022)
Working Paper: Too Healthy to Fall Sick? Longevity Expectations and Protective Health Behaviours during the First Wave of COVID-19 (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:202:y:2022:i:c:p:733-745

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.08.015

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